This is the California bungalow as seen through the eyes of a Prairie architect. As with the Ortner house just down the street ( NO302), this house has a Viennese Secessionist quality of design that we often associate with the Chicago architect George W. Maher. As one often finds in Maher's work, solid, classically inspired brick piers sit beside the entrance, and another group supports the adjacent porte-cochere roof. The heaviness of the stone base of the house is countered by the lightness of its roof, which is punctured by delicate, small-scaled gabled dormers. The primacy of the car in suburbia is evident in the combined driveway and front walk which leads to the porte-cochere, symbolically and actually the entrance into the house.
Two other post-World War I Prairie school bungalows that should be seen in Waterloo are the Toenies house (1925) at 1911 South Street, and the Down house (1925) at 803 Williston Avenue. These and several other houses indicate that the fashion for the Prairie mode continued well into the mid-1920s.